I have a great baby voice. It is super enthusiastic, chirpy, suitably high pitched. Why, this morning I had both babies squirming in delight. What was I saying?

‘I’m gonna punch your big fat Nana right in her nose, yes I am, I’m gonna punch her!’ They thought this was hilarious.

What, you don’t say this sort of shit to your kids? From what I’ve found out about incubation periods (two days) and who you catch it from (you’re contagious if you feel like shit), we deffo caught our sicknesses from Big. Fat. Stupid. Nana. (Can you hear the cooing way in which I can say this? And how every sentence sounds like a question due to the lilt at the end? No, it’s not at alllll obnoxious, I assure you.)

Anyway.

It started on Monday night for the middle of the night feed. I woke up as TMD started Snort, and was merrily chatting away at her. She suddenly thrust him at me and muttered, ‘I was terribly sick about a half hour ago. I can’t do this.’ She fell into an immediate and deep sleep. She was so frickin’ pale. She is still mega mega sick, took her first Tamiflu dose last night.

Compadre, with no questions asked, jumped onto a train from The City and came out here to The Country so he could go pick up her anti-virals. I just love him so much and feel so honored to know him, let alone have him be our children’s non-god godfather. They are lucky little pumpkins. Anyway.

I’ve been on solo twin care duty since about 3 am late Monday night. It is better and worse than you would think it is. Except that now little Coconut is coughing, coughing, coughing. She had some mega throw ups last night. Neither baby seems sick, per say (excepting the coughing and sneezing). Coconut isn’t quite her cheerful self, but then Snort has somehow morphed into The Most Cheerful Baby On The Planet. So maybe he stole some of her good humour? Can twins do that?

We didn’t get to bed till after midnight last night. It was a tricky evening, and probably because I was so worn out. I can normally count on TMD jumping right in once she’s home, and we’ve got it sorted that she always does middle of the night feeds unless they both need to be fed at the same time. I was so worried they would need that last night, because we’re keeping TMD away from the babies. (She is too weak to help feed them anyway.) She slept on the couch, which appears to have broken her back.

It’s all a bit spooky because she never gets sick. And even if she is feeling a bit off colour, she refuses to admit it. She has transformed to someone who is sleeping hours at a time, alternates between being pale and quite flushed, and actually moans in pain when she is awake. Not nice. Still, she admits she feels like absolute hell this morning, but she doesn’t look as sick. She was also awake out here for about 40 minutes, which is a world record.

So, in conclusion, fuck you Nana. Fuck you real bad.

SHIT. Coconut coughing again – every time she does, large amounts of spit up accompany it.

‘Imma fuck up your Nana, Imma fuck her up hardcore, yes I am, yes I am!’

Edit: Fuck. Snort just threw up massively bad. If there is a god of twin parents out there, a god of lone care givers, I hope they/it/he/she are on my side. I hope I can care for two throwing up three month olds. Today is their three month birthday, so perhaps the birthday god will also help us out. Oh, and the god of polka dot pajamas.

Saralema – Didymos are the same sort of idea as Moby wrap. One main difference is that the Moby wrap is stretchy, and Didymos are woven. They offer better support for bigger babies/toddlers. We went straight for these as we already have borrowed a stretchy wrap from family (and love it!). The Didymos are also more of a long term investment as you can wear them for ages!

Tatiana – Why not get a wrap now? Lots of people don’t get them till much older. You can even make your own. You can get a shortie one as Maya is older and use hip carries. Our Didymos are also good for rucksack carries – go to youtube. It’s awesome. You can also wear a toddler AND a baby *nudge, nudge*

CJ – a cot is a crib, I think. A cotbed is a cot that is extra large, and when your baby is old enough you take off the side bars and it transforms into a bed. You can use these till they are five. We were going to go for this option (can you tell we like things with longevity?), but with the two cots that are smaller, we will have slightly more room in their nursery.

Went to MIL’s this weekend – our first big trip with Coconut and Snort. All went well, except MIL didn’t bother to tell us she was raging sick. Now TMD is locked in the bedroom after being sick all night (this is the second time in ten years she has been sick), my throat hurts, and Coconut has decided that she really doesn’t need to eat. Coughing, coughing. All of this is reeeeeeeeally convenient because they are due for their second set of jabs tomorrow and can’t get them if they are sick.

I ordered two Didymos wraps yesterday, Katja and Simon. FIL was going to get us cotbeds for the birth gift, but we’ve received another free cot off of freecycle and will stick with two cots. Both are still shoehorned into the same cot in our room at present. We don’t want them to move out. Anyway, he’s getting the wraps and the mattress for the new cot as the updated baby gift.

Lots to say about babywearing. More later.

Crazy ass healthy visitor coming today for their three month check up. Going to weigh and measure them too. I’m curious, because they seem like behemoth babies to me.

Okay. Both fidgety and cry-ish a bit. Damn you MIL. And then you have the nerve to say, ‘I was sick,but I’m fine now. This isn’t a cough, it’s a tickle in my throat’ as you HACK UP A LUNG.

Last night culminated in my hanging over the sink (I couldn’t stand upright anymore), frantically trying to cool off two bottles that were so hot my fingerprints were melting off just from holding them. I was sobbing. The babies were going fucking mental.

Five minutes before my physical and mental collapse, I had called Compadre. You know, just so another human being would know that somewhere north of the city, a woman had two screaming babies and no bottles. He got to hear what happens when I do the ‘muslin dance’, on a good day. (This is waving a muslin back and forth over my head while using a bright, chirpy voice to spout out nonsense like, ‘Mama’s dancing, yes she is. Look at Mama dance! She’s a sexy Mama, crazy Mama, dancing Mama’ etc etc. The babies like it – or at least are fascinated enough to stop crying.)

When I got off the phone with him, I peeked out of the kitchen at the babies. Once they see my face, the harbringer of hope and milk, and I dare to go out of their sight, the screaming is unbelieveable. (I should qualify all of this by saying that yesterday in general was rather nightmarish, and I believe this is because they have started teething. Also, I am lucky. The only time my kids generally cry is when they are hungry, and sometimes not even then. They are such laid back babies that when a total screamfest like last night happens, I can’t bear it. It breaks my heart. The kicker is that they’re going through a growth spurt and need to eat under every three hours and ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY.)

So…I called TMD. Just to get some empathy. Just so I could cry for thirty seconds.

Instead, pure poison spewed out of my mouth. Along the lines of, ‘Working this late is unacceptable and inappropriate and if you think you are EVER doing it again you are fucking crazy!’ I believe I said worse things, things I am ashamed to write here.

She came home.

Between the time of that phone call and her arrival, I learned that if babies scream and lose control for long enough, they will fall asleep. This is a horrid thing and I wish I did not know it.

The thing is, I hurt so bad. I woke up this morning and my pelvis – front, back, and sides – feels worse than it did on the day I was released from hospital after having Coconut and Snort. I cannot lift my feet up. So I am shuffling along, dragging my right leg, leaning heavily on pieces of furniture, door frames, etc. The pain is electric, burning, intense.

I am hooked up to a TENS machine and about to go gulp down six years worth of pain medication.

It hurts. So badly.

My front is like I’ve fallen off a high building, shattered my bones, and then someone in steel toe boots comes along and keeps repeatedly kicking me in the broken bones. My hip is a needling, bright, hot pain. My back back pelvis joint is the creepiest. All loose, all torn, and all ready to make me actually collapse at its whim. There is no predicting when the electric pain will shoot from this joint, when it will make my right leg crumple. I have tumbled to the floor several times. I am terrified this will happen while holding a baby.

So another day on the couch, my lovely babies in their bouncer chairs. No real tummy time or floor time, because it’s not just lifting them that’s the problem, it’s lifting myself.

I read in a blog of a woman expecting twins that if twins were a blessing to her, it was a curse for them. I was captivated by that sentence. Part of me believes it. Part of me doesn’t. But it’s like, they normally are getting, I suppose, half the attention a singleton might get. I feel I am providing a really good level of interaction with them, though, so I don’t often feel too guilty. But today I do.

They are supposed to have a life of chances, of possibility. Instead – for today, at least – they’ve got a Mama who is in so much pain she almost can’t bear it.

Slowly fermenting baby puke is in my bra, spread between my boobs like hummous. I am wearing my third outfit of the day…it has been dug out of the dirty laundry. I am wearing what were, until I purchased jeans, my ‘fancy trousers for best.’ These are black sweatpants.

I managed to rip a comb through my white girl overnight dreds this morning, but now my pulled back hair has the distinctive sheen of dirty.

Pause to smell the baby puke.

My back is breaking as I am hunched over my daughter (aka The Puker). She is not blinking, staring fixedly at the dead space above my shoulder. She is not asleep.

My son is in his bouncer, where I had to put him when she started screaming. He is biting his hand so hard I am wondering if I remember baby CPR in case he gums off one of his fingers and it gets stuck. He is not asleep.

They are both teething.

I am listening to folk music on lastfm, the place where people who cannot afford to purchase music hangout. I am wearing the same fuzzy red socks I put on after my shower last night.

I am not asleep.

My wife is working till nine tonight. She got a letter in the mail today telling her she was fabulously smart and did extremely well on her dissertation. She is not at home to help me when one baby is puking so hard it will soak through my sweatpants into my underwear, while the other screams like someone other than himself has bit his hand off….and my father-in-law plays on facebook, asking me the odd question about how to friend people while I am passing off my farts as belonging to the babies.

Oh.

Baby boy now crying.

We. Are Not. Asleep.

(You wanna bone me now, don’t you? I may no longer be breastfeeding, but my tits have more milk on them than you can possibly imagine.)

Originally posted 29 June 2008, title ‘I’ll think of you these months, while I wait.’

I’ve wanted you in my life for years, you and your sister, your brother. I will be exasperated when you ask for a dog, we will make pudding messes together, you will be allowed to fingerpaint on canvases large enough to paint our lives on.

I want to know you so well, before you are born and afterwards. I can’t wait for the moment TMD holds you in her arms, my hair lank with sweat. I will thank god for every stretch and tear in my vagina, every mark on my body from carrying your weight, my chapped nipples. Sometimes I will be exhausted, sometimes I will weep, sometimes I will wonder if I am up to the awesome job of being one of your mothers. Throughout those times there will never be a moment I wish you were not here, with me, with us, together.

I want to hold you and make up little songs in the middle of the night. I want to drop with the need to sleep, and TMD to come hold us both, even though she has to wake up in two hours for work. I want to hear you squeal as you splash water all over the bathroom floor. I want to read you the book I will write, just for you, about how you came into this world and became part of our family.

I want my heart to break when you go to your first day of school. I want my little sister to take you on wild adventures that I really don’t want to hear about. I want to buy you that camera, those ballet shoes, that baseball glove. I want to encourage you and remember what it was like to be young once, the world shining and huge and open to possibilities. I want to read you the same book again and again, to the point of skipping words or pages in the hopes you will not notice; I will be pleased, and tired, when you DO notice.

I want you to fill my belly, my heart, our life. I want to go to antenatal classes and trade endless boring stories with other pregnant moms. I want you to be there, to talk to the next one through the thin layer of skin as he/she stretches my body once more. I want to teach you how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I want to give you lots of time alone with your imagination, I want you to never doubt that I love you – even when you are fifteen and think you hate me.

I want to argue about how well you are/are not learning to drive. I want to visit you at university and take you out for really expensive meals – you and all your friends. I want to completely fuck up braiding your hair, or figuring out how to top n’ tail. I want to fear giving birth and look forward to it at the same time. I want to watch you figure out who you are, and I want to be there – in the background – when you realise that you are who you are right now…who you are does not come at 16, 18, 21, 50, 80.

I want strangers to stop and say how cute you are. I want presumptuous people to feel my belly. I want you to kick them away. I am ready for you; I’m sitting in your room right now. You get the last of the evening’s sunlight. Your window looks out onto this quiet little street, where you will ride your bike and make friends with other scabby kneed kids. This will be your first home, and every minute of looking for that home included reserving a special space just for you. Your room has rose-coloured carpet and curtains – it came with the house, but we sort of like it. There’s room for a little pop-up tent, or a chair with a blanket over it, or a rocking chair.

We’re not rich, but we’re not poor. And when you come, when you emerge into this world, I want you to know that I wanted you with every fibre of my being, that my soul has waited for you this immensely long time, that you were loved before you were even conceived.

I’ve made an appointment with your other mom, to see the doctor who is going to help us make you. It’s for the day after I turn 30, and the best birthday present I can imagine having will be seeing the day that your birth day comes.